In the Shadow of Great Times
by Cerastella
Summary: War rages across Europe, throughout the continent cities crumble to ruin and millions lie dead. After watching her father fade away after the last war, Carolyn is desperate to do anything to stop this one. But when she is captured by a mysterious Nazi division on a mission in France, she could never have imagined where her choices would take her and the consequences they would have
1. Chapter 1

**In the Shadow of Great Times**

 **Chapter 1**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise.**

* * *

 **In the Shadow of Great Times**

 _We are like people at a wayside station, waiting between_

 _trains, or between planes._

 _We attend the cinema, consult our watches._

 _We sit down and stretch our legs, stare at the skylight._

 _We buy a paper and read it without comprehending._

 _Noticing the whistles blowing, the crowds coming and going,_

 _We listen for the porter to call sonorously the panel of_

 _destinations._

 _Decorously the clock ticks; we await the roar of the transport._

 _Helen Goldbaum, 1939_

 _~~~*8*~~~_

"… _that consequently this country is at war with Germany."_

Carolyn could barely breathe.

The whole world seemed to pause, all of civilisation taking a collective breath as something monumental shifted in the air.

 _War._

Carolyn stole a glance at her mother, sitting across the room from her on that hideous armchair they had inherited from her grandmother, teacup frozen halfway to her lips as her eyes stared unblinking into the distance, her rouged mouth forming a perfect 'o'.

The whole situation seemed unreal and the rest of Mr Chamberlain's speech was quite lost on her after that declaration and, in future, if pressed, she would struggle to recall exactly where she had been and what she had been doing at that moment.

Eventually the world released its breath and planet began spinning again; her mother put down her teacup and the pale china clinked softly when it hit the saucer.

The two of them sat in silence, neither saying a word as the early autumn moved on around them. The bluetits outside chirped merrily in the sun, the breeze blew past: unheard and unseen, and the trees rustled their summer leaves.

It was as if world didn't know it had just changed forever.

~~~*8*~~~

Carolyn Hillsbury had always considered herself fairly lucky; disregarding the few private tragedies she had faced; her life was not exceptionally anything. She had been born the eldest (and only) child of Arthur and Mary Hillsbury, a fairly well-to-do couple distantly descended from money but far too removed for the connection to mean anything. She had been raised in a household that had manged to remain affluent throughout the depression and had never really wanted for anything. Like many of her generation, she was a victory baby, a child born from the delirious happiness and joyful reunions following the end of the Great War and brought up in its shadow.

Her very earliest memories are dominated by her father: his distant, haunted blue eyes and the heavy-set lines carved into his face; the slight tremor in his hands when he stared into the distance and how he seemed forever lost despite being home.

Her father had been a soldier, an officer, in the Great War. Enlisting originally as Private Arthur Hillsbury of the 6th (service) Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment and part of the 37th Brigade of Kitchener's New Army, he had ended the war a decorated Sergeant and war hero. A profoundly changed man.

Her mother had always said that it had happened slowly, her father's descent into hysteria and madness. A slow, insidious thing, brought about by the horrors he had seen in France and the scars carved into his psyche by German artillery.

Whatever had brought it on, her father's shellshock had been one of the cornerstones of her childhood.

She could never shout too loudly, lest he retreat into the horrors in his mind; never sneak up on him, lest he react like a cornered beast. Before the war he'd been a lawyer, now he could no longer hold a job, not when every loud noise sent him diving for cover and the shame of it crushed him a little more.

They lived off her parent's inheritance, both of her grandfathers had been bankers and it was through them that her parents had met. After they died what was left of their fortunes went to them and allowed her family to continue its comfortable existence, despite the primary breadwinner being out of work.

But the shame of his own incapability destroyed her father in ways the shellshock never could. Here was a man, an intelligent, responsible man, unable to provide for his own family, unable to give them the life they should have had. It was twisted feeling that fermented inside his heart and saw him driven further into his own mind, sent him wandering almost constantly down the bloody mud and corrugated metal alleys of the trenches.

And in the end he lost himself there.

He was never violent, her father, simply unbearably sad. The more the shellshock affected him, the worse the sadness got, the more the shellshock acted up. It was vicious cycle that ruined his life and pulled her and her mother into the melancholy with him. He tried, oh did he try, but their house was never a happy one. No children were born after her, not when her father couldn't sleep through the night without waking up screaming and thrashing in bed, and her mother loved him too much to ever contemplate leaving him.

Carolyn had grown up with the spectre of war hovering omnipresent over her head, the dark, looming realness of it. The terror it caused, the broken souls it left behind. She had grown up with a deep, intimate knowledge of the real cost of victory and the terrible price paid by the men who fought their nation's wars.

When her father had finally passed when she was twelve it was almost a relief. No longer would he be tortured by the ghosts in his head, no more would he drink endlessly and stare, mournful and sad, into the empty bottles. He would be at peace at last, his war finally over.

It was because of this, because of her father and the memory of his anguish, that on the morning of the 9th September 1939 when war was announced all she could think was _no, not again._

~~~*8*~~~

 _18_ _th_ _October 1943, Somewhere in the Alps, Austria_

" _Get in there, you bitch!"_

Carolyn remained resolute in her silence as the German soldier pushed her into the cage. Five dirty, half-starved men stared up at her with wide eyes from the floor and she stumbled over their legs as she was forced into the tight space. Shooting them all a brief look of apology, she turned back to the soldier and glared at him, her eyes filled with loathing and her jaw tight with restraint. He sneered at her, face twisted with a kind of sadistic glee, _"We'll see if you still have that look on your face once the Obergruppenführer sees you,"_ he said before slamming the cage door shut with a resounding clang.

" _Fuck you!"_ she spat back in German.

For one moment, his eyes filled with wild rage and she thought for a second that he would open the cage up again to hit her, but he gave her one last venom filled smirk before turning and marching away.

Carolyn stared murderously at his retreating back, mentally detailing all the ways in which she would slowly kill him and wondered momentarily when she had become so violent.

"Uh, ma'am?" came a tentative voice from behind her.

Carolyn whipped her head back around to face her cellmates, examining each of their grimy faces with narrowed eyes. The peered up at her in the dark with something akin to shock in their eyes and she internally scoffed at it.

"Yes?" she answered, precise and clipped.

It was the one at the back that answered her, a dark-haired man dressed in a tattered US army uniform with rather nice eyes, "Oh good, you speak English," he said, his accent slipping in. _New York,_ she thought, _or north east at the very least_.

She raised an eyebrow as she answered him, "Of course," she replied, short as the first time.

"Ah, was just worried you were a kraut for a moment there, what with the German," he said, one side of his mouth quirking up into a half-smile that was probably charming when he wasn't covered with dirt and his blue eyes glittered with amusement, "wass'a dame like you doin' in a place like this anyway?"

Carolyn took a moment to look the man up and down, the slight smirk that he wore on his lips, the confident jut of his chin, the somehow languid grace of his body even though he was scrunched up in a cage; _yes, this one was a charmer._ "Classified," she replied, daring him to question her. The man just shrugged, the action relaxed and loose and inclined his head before relaxing back against the bars behind him.

Turning her attention away from her cellmates, she glanced around the cage for a place to sit, wrinkling her nose a little at the filthiness of floor and the small pools of fetid water that gathered by the bars. It was disgusting, no wonder all the men looked like they'd been rolling in mud and she felt grime gather on her skin just looking at it. Inside though, Carolyn knew she was lucky, if she had been caught by the Gestapo in France, her situation would have been much, _much_ worse: immediate torture and interrogation, shipping to the east, or just a plain bullet to the head.

As it stood, this wasn't _too_ bad for a POW camp, but she supposed she'd have to reserve judgement until she met the Obergruppenführer, that was when the real fun would start.

She decided that the safest bet was to sit down where she stood, at least there was space there, and she slowly sank to the ground, grimacing a little when she had to touch the floor for balance.

"You're not a nurse, are you?" another man asked.

She turned to look at him, sizing him up as well. Another ladies-man, middling height, decently handsome, silly moustache he probably thought made him look distinguished but didn't, and serious dark eyes. He noticed her looking threw her a sheepish smile, "Ah, sorry, should probably introduce myself first, James Montgomery Falsworth at your service, ma'am," he said with a bob of his head. "But you're not a nurse. Are you a spy? Churchill's Secret Army?" he asked.

Carolyn's eyes widened in horror and quick as a flash she scrambled over to him and shoved her hand over his mouth. "Are you stupid?" she hissed in his face, "Are you trying to get me killed? I don't know if the Nazis know that yet and I'd rather you didn't confirm it!"

Falsworth's eyes grew large in realisation and he shook his head fervently in denial, mumbling under her hand.

"Good," she murmured forcefully, casting her eyes around the dark prison to make no one had been in earshot, "now _shut up!_ "

She retreated back to where she had chosen to sit and arranged herself so that she was comfortable, feeling somewhat disgusted when she felt the moisture on the ground seep into her trousers. She was incredibly grateful to be wearing them though, they were simple things, loose cotton that she'd nabbed from the resistance group she'd been working with but they'd served her well. More importantly however, they were infinitely better than a skirt.

After her outburst and Falsworth's pronouncement, the men in the cell were eying her with a wary sort of respect and a half-formed curiosity that echoed on each of their faces. Fortunately for her though, not one of them seemed to have taken offence to the fact that she was a woman, and, greatly to her relief, none had that singular hungry look of lust about them that many soldiers got around members of the opposite sex.

Carolyn took the opportunity then to study each of them in turn while they stared at her through the gloom. There was the charming New Yorker, Falsworth (who's accent and the union flag on his beret gave away as British), a black man and a man with an impressive moustache who both wore American uniforms and a short, scruffy man whose non-regulation clothes marked him as resistance.

Each one of them looked battered and worn, an endless tiredness peering out of their eyes which told her that each of them was far from green to this war and Carolyn instantly felt a pang of sympathy for them. She knew better than most how hard it would be for them to leave this all behind if they survived, and not for the first time she cursed heatedly in her head that the world had come to this at all.

"Well I suppose we should introduce ourselves then, ma'am," the American with the moustache said, taking his bowler hat off and holding it to his chest, "Timothy Dugan, at your service, but call me Dum Dum."

Carolyn raised her eyebrows at that, such an odd nickname, but she put it down to army humour and nodded her head that she understood.

The black man spoke next, "Gabriel Jones, miss, and this here's Jacques Dernier," he said indicating to the scruffy man next to him, with a wave of his hand.

The man tilted his head to her in acknowledgement, " _Bonjour, mademoiselle,"_ he said.

Carolyn quickly looked around to make sure there were no guards and leant toward the Frenchman, _"Are you resistance, monsieur?"_ she whispered urgently to him across the cell.

" _Yes, mademoiselle, why do you ask?"_ he replied frowning, although his eyes shined with delight at conversing in his native tongue.

" _What cell?"_ she questioned back, her eyes staring into his intensely as her hands formed into tight fists, gripping the material of her trousers between white knuckles.

" _Marquis,"_ he answered, _"Haute-Savoie department."_

Her breath caught in her throat at that and her heart stuttered; she sat back with a heavy sigh. _Shit,_ she thought, _bloody buggering hell._ That was the resistance cell she'd been on her way to meet with when she'd been caught by the Germans. _Fuck,_ she cursed, if he was here then were the rest of his unit here too? She seriously hoped not, Marquis were a guerrilla force and the cell in the Haute-Savoie department were especially useful for getting POWs, agents and people on the run into Switzerland. If all of them had been captured it caused major problems for her mission. _Not that it mattered much right now,_ she thought self-deprecatingly, _can't do anything from a prison camp._

" _Thank you, monsieur,"_ she sighed, _"how many were captured?"_ sheasked, dreading the answer, _what on Earth would happen if the entire cell had been taken?_

" _Hmm_ ," his eyebrows pulled together in thought and his eyes drifted upward as he counted in his head, _"Marquis? About ten? But there are others here, from different cells, couple'a Italians too,"_ he answered with a pensive look.

Carolyn couldn't help the quick gasp of relief that left her lungs, _oh_ _thank_ _God_ , only ten _,_ her mission wasn't a total failure from the get go then, the SOE could just send another agent if she didn't make it out. She closed her eyes and uttered a quick prayer to the heavens in thanks, some of the tension that had been present since her capture loosening. As much as she feared her fate here, her life was of little significance compared to each and every one of her missions, so the fact that it could be salvaged did much to ease her mind.

Someone in the cell cleared their throat and her eyes snapped open.

"Not to interrupt, doll, but I'd like to introduce myself too."

It was the New Yorker again, the one that had spoken first and she turned to face him, cocking a brow in an unspoken encouragement to continue.

He grinned, "James Barnes, ma'am, but please, call me Bucky," he said with a roguish smile.

 _Really?_ she thought incredulously. There was no way she was calling a grown man _Bucky_. _Dum Dum_ , was bad enough, but _Bucky?_ That sounded like a character out of a badly written children's book.

A few moments of awkward silence that passed between the six of them, each of the men looking at her somewhat imploringly until she realised that they were probably waiting for her to give her name too. She groaned internally, the more she talked, the more likely it was that someone would hear something they shouldn't and she didn't want to be responsible for the consequences of that.

In the end, she decided on introducing herself as one of the identities she was currently carrying, hoping that they'd all be smart enough not to ask questions. Both of her current aliases were established individuals with all the paperwork and backstory to match, but she decided on the one that was closest to her though, that way she'd be able to face her probable eventually interrogation better prepared. "I'm Susan Baker," she said, "it's nice to meet you all, although I wish it could be under better circumstances."

The men gave sad smiles and sarcastic snorts in reply.

"Ain't that the truth," Dugan muttered under his breath, looking darkly at his surroundings.

Falsworth gave a half-hearted laugh and slapped his shoulder, "Oh, come now, my friend, this place isn't too bad, won't find better rooms anywhere in Europe! Even beats The Ritz."

Dugan shot him a disgusted look in return, "I dread to think what all the other hotels in London must be like then if you think this is better than The Ritz."

"Much better than your American ones I'm sure," Falsworth replied innocently.

Dugan scowled and opened his mouth to say something scathing in retort when Barnes piped in, "Come on, guys, we've a lady in here now," he said with a meaningful look in her direction, "best act with a little more manners, or didn't yah mas teach ya that?"

He merely got two withering looks in reply.

Jones leaned in next to her and murmured under his breath, "I hope we're not offending you in any way, ma'am, it's just, we've been here for a while now and tempers run hot in small spaces."

She snorted under her breath and leaned a little toward him to answer, "Oh I know, and it doesn't bother me, I've been around enough soldiers to know it could be worse," she shrugged.

The corners of his lips tilted up a little at her response and he moved to sit back in his original position, ignoring a grumbling Dernier next to him.

Carolyn decided then to assuage her curiosity, she knew where Dernier was from, but she had no idea about the others and it was starting to bother her, she was, by nature intensely curious (which made her a good spy) so she decided to find out. She brushed off some invisible lint from her trousers and turned to address the group, "So where are you all from anyway?" she asked, meeting the eyes of each of them in turn.

They exchanged a few glances between themselves before Barnes answered, "Dum Dum, Gabe and I from the US Army, but ya probably already guessed that," he shrugged, "I'm the 107th, Gabe's the 92nd and Dum Dum's the 69th. Monty's one o' yah paratroopers and Frenchie over there's resistance, but again I figure ya probably got the last one already," he said. "Don't know about the others, but the three o' us got picked up when the Nazis that cornered us were killed by other Nazis. The whole thing was mighty strange," he finished, shaking his head.

Carolyn's brain latched on to that, registering it as pertinent information and her lips pursed in thought "Wait," she said, "Nazis that kill other Nazis?"

"Yeah," Dugan answered with a hum, stroking his chin, "we were shocked too, but to honest I don't care as long as there are less of them to worry about, let the bastards kill each other as much as they want, I say!"

Falsworth sighed and turned to look at the American "You're missing the point here, Dum Dum," he replied, "Nazis shouldn't be killing other Nazis, it doesn't make sense." His face then took on a sombre cast and the shadows under his eyes grew darker, "The bastards caught me when we were parachuting in over Italy," he gave her a haunted look and a humourless smile, "you're looking at the last of His Majesty's 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade," he said, his expression grave as he looked down hopelessly at his hands, flexing them emptily.

An air of grief and melancholy seemed to pervade the cell then. A smothering shroud of regrets and mourning which made the prison colder and the night seem somehow darker. All five of the men seemed to be lost in their own private grief, the lives taken and the men they would never see again. All of them joined by the shared losses of war. Carolyn let them feel it and stayed silent with them out of respect, any and all soldiers who died fighting were worthy of her deepest admiration. Not all them would have chosen to fight but all of them had given everything they could and that's what made it all the more desperately tragic.

She idly thumbed at the sleeve of her jacket in the silence, fiddling with a loose bit of thread as she mulled over what Barnes had said about the Nazis that captured them. That was a new piece of information alright. She and any other intelligence specialist worth their salt knew that there were deep divisions within the Third Reich, she'd be stupid not to. But as far as she and her colleagues back in London were aware (as far as she knew anyway) the enmity wasn't violent; Hitler had enough control over the squabbling factions of his forces to get them to work together despite their differences.

But a potential rogue element changed the game entirely. It raised serious question about the validity of their information on the enemy and posed more about the goals of this group. Being Nazis, it couldn't be anything good, but the level of evil that they operated at was yet unknown and whether or not they could be swayed to help the Allied forces was a pertinent question to consider.

Carolyn tugged at the thread in frustration, scowling at the situation she'd found herself in. All this information was incredibly important and those were questions she'd have to find answers to while she was here. But that was easy. It was what came after that was the hard part.

It was Jones that interrupted the solemn silence, "So how 'bout you, Miss Baker, how'd you end up here?" he asked and the others looked up with curiosity.

She gave the thread on her jacket one last tug and snapped it off before answering, watching the green string flutter softly to the ground. She looked up and examined their expressions carefully, looking for any warning signs of potential spies before she began, one could never be too cautious after all.

She was going to go along with Susan Baker's story, it would be good practise for interrogation, "Same as you lot really," she said tiredly, "I'm a member of the Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps," at the looks of confusion shot her way she elaborated, "the Women's Transport Service, I drive ambulances to the front and administer immediate first aid, it's kind of like a field medic," she finished with an absent flick of her wrist.

The looks she received in return were somewhat sceptical, her cellmates obviously having remembered that she was actually a spy, but thankfully, none of them seemed inclined to question her.

Barnes stretched his legs out with a groan and tipped his head to her, a conspiratorial smirk lighting his features, "That's mighty brave of you, doll," he said and the other men nodded.

"I know from experience that the Women's Transport Service are life savers," Falsworth added, eyes lit up with amusement, having caught on to the ruse, "a friend of mine would have died if not for them a couple of months ago," he said.

Carolyn smiled at them in thanks, glad both that they seemed intent on preserving her cover and that these soldiers appreciated the work women did for them. Not all of them soldiers did, she couldn't count the number of times she'd been dismissed or trivialised because of her gender; it was even more frustrating when she could probably take all of them in a fight and win due to her SOE training.

She didn't feel too bad about lying to her cellmates about her identity, especially since she _had_ actually been a member of the Corps, it was where the SOE had recruited her from. When her father had spoken of The Great War, he had spoken of the bravery of the Corps in France, how when the British forces had wanted nothing to do with them, they had helped the French and Belgians instead, so determined they were to offer assistance. How courageous they were, heading to the front with their ambulances when even most of the men would've refused.

It was for those reasons that the moment the war had broken out she'd been straight up to London to join, determined to do _something_ to help. She'd already been able to drive, had rudimentary nursing skills (having taken a course back home) and was willing to face the danger, all of which made her an ideal recruit.

It wasn't until a year and a half later when she'd completed all her training and was about to be sent to North Africa that she'd been approached. She'd been highly suspicious at first, not quite sure what these mysterious individuals in their shadowy world had wanted, but in the end they'd won her over.

She'd been an attractive prospect to the SOE from the start: she'd very little family connection beside her mother- no husband, children or siblings, and spoke near perfect French. She'd spent a lot of time in France with her mother after her father had died when she was younger, so had a good working knowledge of the customs and a was a fully trained nurse, wireless operator and amateur code breaker on account of the Corps.

But mainly, she wasn't afraid to die.

She'd been told straight off what to expect from the Special Operations Executive. She would be in mortal danger at all times as a field agent, constantly at risk of discovery and likely to be tortured for information if caught. Her job would be unsavoury, her duties enough to turn most women's stomachs. She'd be an assassin and a saboteur, a liason to the resistance groups dotted across France and had to be prepared to use her body if it became necessary.

She'd undergone intensive training at Airsaig, everything from endurance to silent killing to parachuting and field craft. Afterwards she'd been sent to Beaulieu to learn espionage skills: complex coding and message sending, everything thought necessary for an agent in the field.

Since then she'd been parachuted into France a handful of times with the aim to sabotage the Nazi war machine as much as possible: to disrupt supply lines, destroy rail links, rally the resistance and spread propaganda. Each time had been a dance with death where one wrong move could've gotten her shot for spying. The most nerve-wracking part though had always been her escapes into Switzerland: long, gruelling slogs through the French countryside at night, dodging German patrols and potential traitors, trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible.

It was not a career for the faint of heart.

That wasn't to say that she hadn't be absolutely _terrified_ each and every time she'd been dropped into occupied Europe, but what had kept her going had been her the memory of her father, his heart-breaking sadness. As far as she was concerned every sabotage job, assassination and resistance group contacted was time taken off the war. Every minute of the war she shaved off was one less minute for a soldier to be haunted by for the rest of his life. Every battle, ambush or attack she prevented was one less for a man to relive forever, always lost in the horror. It was one less son or daughter with an emotionally absent father, once less wife to grieve a husband who was the walking dead.

That was why she did it, _that_ was why she risked her life. In the memory of her father's pain and his struggles, for the remembrance of The Great War, the bloodbath it had been and the tortured souls it had left in its wake.

The hope that _this time_ humanity would learn from its mistakes and this war really would be The War to End All Wars.

But that wasn't what she told her cellmates.

"I was captured while giving aid to British troops in Italy, this huge tank -bigger than any I have ever seen- just appeared from nowhere and before I knew it I'd been captured and brought back here," she said.

They nodded along, obviously knowing that this story was a lie but all of them smart enough not to refute it. It was likely that the Germans already knew she was a spy, but she was hardly going to take her chances.

She'd actually been captured on her way up to the Haute-Savoie department from the resistance group she'd been working with in Provence. She'd spent her time there sabotaging links from France to Italy and trying to create connections between the French and Italian resistance groups.

She'd been travelling at night through the mountain trails along the alps when her and her guide had been spotted, a patrol of guards dressed in uniforms she had never seen before had appeared out of nowhere and overwhelmed them. They had knocked her out and when she'd woken up she'd be here, wherever here even was.

"So," she said to her cellmates, "do you know who runs this camp?"

All of them shook their heads negative, "Sorry, ma'am," Dugan apologised, "not a clue."

"All we know," Jones said, "is that they're not Gestapo, SS or the regular army."

"Which leaves us with zero ideas," finished Falsworth.

Dernier chimed in, after sitting and listen to Jones translate the conversation for him, _"I might know,"_ he said, _"when I was taken here in their truck I heard them talking."_

Carolyn perked up and paid close attention, _"Yes?"_ she answered, _"What did they say?"_

Dernier shrugged nonchalantly, _"Not much I could understand, but they mentioned 'Hydra' a lot"_ he said. _"It was 'Hydra' this and 'Hydra' that and 'Heil Hydra!''"_ he ended, performing comical parody of the Nazi salute, leaving the other men sniggering and replying with ridiculous imitations of their own.

But Carolyn felt herself go cold.

 _Oh shit._

Now Hydra, Hydra she had heard of.

Nazi deep science division, more secretive than MI6 and madder than a box of cats. Run by Johann Schmidt, crazy even by Nazi standards and utterly obsessed with ancient myths. He'd been a member of the SS pre-war and in Hitler's inner circle the moment it started, since then the Führer had personally endorsed and sponsored a number of his projects and Hydra had turned out some of the deadliest weaponry of the war.

Hydra was insane, a collection of crazy people devoted to their leader with a mind-numbing intensity that felt beyond normal even in the Third Reich. And don't get her started on his pet doctor, Armin Zola, that _thing's_ proclivity for unethical science could put some of the horror stories she'd heard out of the east to shame.

Stories of un-anaesthetised operations performed on POWs and Jewish prisoners, the systematic taking apart of the body to see which parts were truly necessary and obscene endurance tests to push the human body to its absolute limits.

If this was really Hydra, they were in deep shit.

But on the up side it did answer all her questions about her captors, if there was any Nazi faction to go rogue, she definitely would've put money on Hydra.

Barnes, who had been observing her quietly from the back, noticed her flinch and narrowed his eyes at her, "You know who this 'Hydra' is, don't you?" he questioned softly, making sure his voice wouldn't carry.

She gestured for them all to lean in, they deserved to know what they were up against more than she needed her cover. "They're Nazi scientists," she murmured when they'd all moved to huddled in the middle of the cage, "crazy scientists, with no ethics and no rules. Most of the Germans will respect the Geneva Convention if you're not Russian but Hydra won't, they don't care and apparently they no longer work for the Führer either," she told them.

All the men looked stunned and appalled, the realisation dawning of their faces that this was not where they wanted to be. Barnes whistled low, "Damn," he said in horrified awe, "we're really lucky all we got is a cage, ain't we?"

Carolyn looked at him and nodded, "From what I know they have their own departments at the POW camps in the east, and the rumours I've heard about the things they do there would make your blood run cold."

"What are we gonna do then," Jones whispered, his voice deep and serious, "we can't just sit here and wait to be experimented on."

Dugan laughed quietly and without humour, "What can we do? We can't escape, we've all been looking, they keep us working all day on those missiles of theirs and lock us in here all night."

"Missiles?" Carolyn hissed abruptly, "What missiles?"

"They have us building missiles, Miss Baker, and lots of them, all powered by this blue light," Falsworth said in explanation.

This was more than worrying, Carolyn reached up and pulled at a lock of auburn hair that had fallen out of her bun. All of Hydra's weapons so far for the Nazi regime had be horrifying in their destructive power: firebombs and terrifyingly efficient machine guns, tanks larger than they had a right to be and an advanced system of communication that ran the entire length of the Gothic Line. She didn't even want to _consider_ what they could do with _missiles._

This information _needed_ to get back to London, whatever the cost.

"Are you sure there are no ways to escape? None at all?" she whispered urgently.

"None at all, ma'am," Dugan replied apologetically.

" _Damn!"_ she cursed, causing the men to raise a few eyebrows at her language, she ignored them though and got back to thinking. After a few seconds going over her options she said, "How about communications? There's got to be a wireless around here that's useable."

Jones shook his head, "Not that we know of, ma'am, if I had t' guess, I'd say that you'd find one in the offices, but we ain't ever gonna get in there," he said.

Carolyn rocked back onto her heels with a scowl, she'd need more time to gather information and assess her choices before attempting something so reckless. That's if she could even get out of this cage.

She looked back at the men who had all crawled back so they were no longer in the middle of the cage and exhaled noisily through her nose in frustration, God this was ridiculous. "What time do you start tomorrow?" she asked them.

"Dawn, doll," Barnes replied with a huff, "though somehow I don't think ya gonna be working on the missiles with us."

 _No,_ she thought, _most likely not_. It was more likely that she'd be dragged away for interrogation, British spies were, after all, a hot commodity among German soldiers, even rogue ones, and she dreaded a little to think what _Hydra_ of all people would do to her.

She ran a hand over her eyes and tugged at her hair again, "Still, dawn's probably not that far away and I'd like to get some sleep just in case they do expect me up bright and early with you lot," she said, sitting herself down again.

Falsworth rubbed at his neck and straightened his beret before doing the same, "Good plan," he said, "I would rather not collapse tomorrow from exhaustion, no one's seen the last man who did since."

"Yeah, me neither," Dum Dum added, settling back and pulling his bowler hat over his face, "'Night all," he said with a wave.

" _Bon nuit, mademoiselle,"_ Dernier told her with a smile and Jones repeated the words in English before leaning his head back against the bars and closing his eyes.

Barnes grinned at her, a sly magnetic thing that made her tut internally but she couldn't help but return, before closing his eyes and letting his head droop.

She let her lids lower and followed his example, knowing that she had better chances if she went into interrogation well rested. The prison was quiet, only the subdued murmurs of men in other cells and the quiet breathing of her own cellmates around her. Occasionally a guard passed overhead, his booted footsteps echoing in the night, but otherwise it was silent. She slowed her breathing to a rhythmic lull and attempted to calm her turbulent mind, she needed desperately to get some sleep.

Tomorrow was not going to be easy.

* * *

 **A/N:** **Wow, look at me, another story, I just can't seem to commit. Don't worry anyone that's waiting on _Wildfire_ and _Of the Forest,_ I am working on the next chapters for those, it's just I had a bit of a MCU binge the other day I just couldn't get this out of my head. Anyway, welcome to my latest project, this one's set in WW2 so my History course should hopefully come in handy, it's an interesting period to explore because it's so inherently dark and there's so much going on but I hope I do it justice. Thank to anyone taking the time to read and I would love to hear from you!**

 **Cerastella x**

 **P.S. Do read the poem, I thought it was particularly poignant considering it was written in 1939, before the war kicked off.**


	2. Chapter 2

**In the Shadow of Great Times**

 **Chapt** **er 2**

 **Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is not mine**

* * *

She jolted awake the moment she heard the shouting.

" _Up! Up, you useless shits!"_

She was instantly alert and her eyes snapped open. The prison was still dimly lit but there were rays of pale sunlight piercing through the tiny barred windows and the chill coldness of night had evaporated. Dawn then, time to start the day.

Her eyes flicked back and forth and she tried not to move a muscle, keeping her breathing even and her limbs still as she fought to maintain the illusion that she was still asleep. Around her, her cellmates were groggily waking up, stretching out their arms and legs and groaning as they were roused from sleep. They hadn't had much, if her own burgeoning headache and the heaviness behind her eyes was anything to go by, and they all looked drowsy and half-alert.

She, unlike them though, had the advantage of training to go hours on end with no sleep and a paranoid level of situational awareness.

Further along the row of cages the guards screamed and shouted in German, rattling the bars to create a resounding cacophony of metallic clanking that grated on her ears. Carolyn scowled internally at the noise, was there really any need for it?

She decided it was time for her to 'wake up' too and she straightened her head up from where it had slumped against the bars during the night and uncurled her legs from the foetal position she had assumed for warmth. Her legs ached from being scrunched up for hours and sharp jabs of pain shot through her neck from the awkward angle. She groaned sleepily and cradled it, tilting her head side to side to work out the cricks and sighing when she felt a promising crack.

She glanced around, faking sleepiness, and caught sight of a guard in uniform stalking towards their cell. His face was set in a stiff scowl and his movements were precise and purposeful. Typical jerry stuffiness and she glared hard at him when he reached over to rattle their cage.

Falsworth, who was closest swore loudly, "Jesus Christ!" he spat as he jumped out of his skin, "can't you bloody see that we're already awake, Fritz!?"

The guard glared daggers down at him and rattled the cage again just to make the point; the other men in the cage groaned and cursed at the continuing noise. Carolyn rubbed at her forehead and glowered up at him from under her hand while Falsworth stuck his index and middle fingers up at him in response. The German just ignored him and stalked away.

"Fuckin' krauts!" Dugan hissed as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, "idiots must think we're all deaf!"

The others muttered their agreement with varying degrees of rancour and continued to stretch themselves out, straightening their clothes and running their hands through greasy hair.

" _They're louder than my mother when she's pissed!"_ Dernier growled as he pulled himself to stand and rolled his shoulders, shaking out the tiredness.

Carolyn smirked at their reactions, having been here a while, you would've thought they'd be used to such an unpleasant wakeup call by now, but no, it was still apparently as reviled as ever.

Barnes cast his gaze over to her as he stood up, "You alright over there, darlin'?" he asked, scratching at his head, "Enjoyed yah first night at Hotel Hydra?"

Carolyn stood up herself and reached her arms up above her head with a yawn before affecting the poshest voice she could manage, "I'm glad you asked, sir," she said, sticking her nose up in the air with a haughty look, "My night was terrible, utterly terrible! The bed felt like it was made of concrete and the service was awful! Now who do I complain to?" she finished with an imperious stare.

Barnes flashed her an impish grin and Dugan barked out a laugh, "Glad t' see you're in good spirits, ma'am!" he chuckled, "Yah gonna need it here!"

Carolyn grunted and ran a hand down her face, "Don't I know it," she muttered and Dugan shot her an apologetic smile in return.

All along the row of cages men seemed to be standing up to start another day of backbreaking forced labour on the enemy's weapons. Their grubby faces were worn and angry and they glared at the German soldiers beginning to unlock the cages with a resigned fury, the kind born from hatred without hope of acting on it. There were uniformed men in strange gasmask-like apparatus lining the walkway, odd rifles in their hands connected by tubing to metal knapsacks on their backs. Carolyn's eyes narrowed as she observed them and her brain was busy whirring in the background as she tried to work out what they were.

They were obviously the newest edition to Hydra's monstrous weapon's arsenal. They looked sleek and modern and unlike any gun she'd ever seen, and she'd fired most types at one point or another. She wondered what its capabilities were: how many rounds it fired, how fast and how far. It had to have been developed recently since she'd never seen one before, and Hydra hadn't split off from the Third Reich too long ago.

Resolving to find out more later, she turned back to her cellmates, watching them as they waited for a guard to unlock the door, "So," she asked, "what happens now?"

It was Jones that answered her, "Well normally they escort us t' the restrooms first," he said, ignoring Dungan's derisive snort of _'restrooms my ass'_ under his breath and continuing, "then t' the mess where they feed us whatever that stuff pretendin' t' be food is, and then we get to work," he then gave her a sidelong look, "though I agree wi' Sarge," he said nodding at Barnes, "I dun' think you're gonna be wi' us, ma'am."

Falsworth looked at her thoughtfully, "Wonder what the jerrys'll have you doing, Miss Baker."

 _Wonder what they'll be doing_ to _me more like,_ she thought wryly, trying to fight off the nervous twist in her gut at the thought of interrogation. It was something she gone into this job knowing she'd most likely have to face at some point, every mission she'd completed and come home from was a welcome blessing, but she'd known that her luck would have to wear off at some point. She didn't regret anything up to this moment though, and she smiled sharp and biting at the thought of the officers she'd killed, the warehouses and railways she'd blown up.

The dark heady rush of those Nazi bastards gasping out their last breaths at her hands and the pyromaniacal joy of watching those fireballs light up the sky.

The SOE's mission was to set Europe ablaze and she was proud to have done her part.

She quickly sobered though when the guard with the key came to unlock their cage. The men stood loosely tense, eyeing the guard with restrained loathing as he twisted the keys into the lock. Dernier was cracking his knuckles and muttering under his breath in colourful French while Dungan hid none of the hatred and suspicion on his face. Barnes's face was the most carefully blank; his blue eyes were narrowed and focused and his features stony.

Finally the cell door swung open with whining creak and the guard stepped aside, allowing one of the masked soldiers to take his place by the door, _"Out!"_ he barked in German and gestured that they all leave the cell. The men filed out one by one and Carolyn followed warily behind them, momentarily amazed that they were letting her go with the men until the guard nodded at the masked soldier and he stepped in front of her, pointing the rifle at her chest. " _Not you, fr_ _ä_ _ulein,"_ he said coldly.

Barnes, having been the last out, noticed what was going on and turned around, "Hey, fritz! What's the big idea!" he called over, an angry scowl forming on his face, "dun' you know how'ta treat a dame?" he growled, storming back over.

He had taken no more than two steps when the other masked soldiers near him raised their rifles, taking aim for his head. Barnes ground to a furious stop, the expression on his face downright murderous as he stared down the guard with the keys. The German looked back impassively, as if Barnes was no more than an ant beneath his boot.

Noticing the commotion, the others turned back around too, all with equally livid faces. Falsworth stepped up beside Barnes and rested a hand on his shoulder causing the soldiers to point their weapons at him too. "I concur with Sergeant Barnes," he said lowly, "we are all gentlemen here and gentlemen don't point weapons at ladies."

The German turned back to Carolyn with cold eyes, " _Tell your friends to stop, fr_ _ä_ _ulein, or there will be consequences,"_ he commanded, his voice quiet but threatening.

She had no idea how the man had worked out she understood German, but it was not in her cellmate's interests to pretend she didn't. She steeled her features so her eyes were icy and sharp and her expression was tight and cool and met his eyes full on. They stared at each other for a few seconds in a private battle of wills before Carolyn, recognising there was little she could do here, called back to her cellmates, "It's alright. I'll be fine. You go," without taking her eyes off the guard.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Barnes make a move like he was about to resist, his face even darker, before Falsworth, equally stony faced, made an abortive movement and shook his head. She turned around to look at them both and met Falsworth's gaze with her own, "Are you sure you'll be alright, Miss Baker," he said seriously, obviously understanding the full gravity of the situation.

"I be fine," she said with a nod, sounding infinitely more confident than she felt.

Falsworth gave her a solemn nod in reply and pulled a reluctant Barnes back toward the others who were soon led away by the soldiers, presumably to what passed as a toilet in this place. Then it was just her, the guard, and a couple of the soldiers.

The guard gave her an assessing glance, his eyes roving impassively up and down her body, from the mud splattered combat boots on her feet, up through the baggy quasi-military shirt and trousers she was wearing, to messy rat's nest of auburn hair on her head where her bun had come loose. She gave him the same treatment. Pale skin, hard dark eyes, sandy blond hair and a smart all black uniform, similar to those of the regular SS, but with one key difference: the strange octopus-skull amalgamation on his collar and his cap.

The Hydra uniform.

Snapping his eyes back to hers, he began to speak, _"You will be taken to attend your personal needs and then the Obergruppenführer will see you."_

 _Joy,_ she thought sarcastically.

" _After that I cannot say. Follow me, fr_ _ä_ _ulein,"_ and with that he turned on his heel and marched off.

Carolyn was frog-marched after him, one soldier in front of her and one behind, which to her seemed ridiculously over cautious: what on Earth was she going to do to him with no weapons in a German POW camp God knows where surrounded by armed men? She gave an unladylike snort, _I suppose I could kick the back of his knee in and make him fall over,_ she thought nastily, glowering at the soldier in front on her, _but that would do fuck all for me in the end_. She resigned herself to following, but with her eyes up to take in anything she came across.

She was led out of the prison area onto an elevated gangway overlooking what looked to be a factory floor. _Holy shit_ this place was massive. The factory floor was easily just as large, if not bigger, than the weapon's plants back home and filled to the brim with armed Hydra personnel patrolling the production lines like malevolent ghosts. The room was filled with bedraggled looking POWs in various states of starvation and exhaustion, toiling on machines that they knew would be pointed at their comrades before long.

Her heart went out to them, how hideous must it be to stare at a gun in your hand and wonder how many of your friends it would go on to kill? Her hatred of the Nazi regime and everything associated with it rose like a tidal wave inside her and she wanted nothing more than to blow this place sky high. The shitty cunts asking POWs and slave labour to build their weapons; back home the women and those who couldn't fight did that; _they_ had no need to force people to build their own killers.

Fucking Nazis. Fucking Hitler. Fucking Hydra.

So lost in her thoughts was Carolyn that she didn't noticed that she'd ground to a halt in the middle of the gangway until the soldier behind her jabbed his rifle into her back. She was jolted out of her mind abruptly and turned around to level a venom filled glare at the man. The effect was muted however as she was just staring particularly murderously at a mask and couldn't see his reaction. She refused to let it affect her though so gave a haughty sniff before turning around and carrying on.

She was led onwards through an increasingly homogenous looking maze of corridors running through the facility. Up and down stairs, left, right, through rooms and over even more massive factory floors with more awful looking weapons. _This place must be Hydra's main production centre_. As her route grew progressively more convoluted, she realised that it was probably all a psychological ploy to intimidate her with the supposed size of the complex.

 _Ha, well joke's on them,_ she thought, _I've been tracking this entire wild goose chase and we've only really gone up one floor and across the building,_ and she smiled smugly to herself.

The one thing that really did stand out though, through the entire pointless walk, was the odd aesthetic of the place. It was a weird mix of the stark utilitarianism of the Third Reich and, strangely enough, the almost comically futuristic mess from _Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe_. She didn't know quite what to make of it. Even the font was different, not the typical Antiqua, or even Fraktur, but more Futura _,_ bolder and more modern. She wondered if that was a statement in itself about Hydra's goals and the desire to distance itself from the regime that built it.

Unfortunately Johann Schmidt was just as psychotic as the rest of them.

Eventually they made it to what she supposed was a bathroom, by the loosest definition of the term, and the guard stopped outside. Carolyn shrugged internally and opened the door to enter and immediately scowled, _Urgh, this place is hideous_. There was a hole in the ground that she supposed was a toilet and a small rusted, cracked sink that she guessed she was meant to use for washing.

The whole place stunk of human faeces.

Now, don't get her wrong, she'd done her business in some _pretty rank_ places over the course of her tenure as a spy: abandoned homes, middle of the woods, communal toilets meant to serve up to thirty people. But never, _never,_ had she been expected to, ahem, _relieve herself_ while being watching by three fucking Nazis.

No. No bloody way.

She turned back to her escorts with a falsely pleasant smile plastered on her face, all teeth and too bright eyes, " _Would you three mind waiting outside? Just for a minute,"_ she said as agreeably as she could muster (which she probably deserved a fucking medal for).

The guard just stared at her with his blank eyes, expression never changing, _"You do it with us here or you don't do it at all,"_ he said tonelessly.

Carolyn's smile melted into a furious snarl and she almost growled at him, _Voyeuristic little deviant,_ she snarled internally and swiftly turned back around to face the bathroom. She mentally steeled herself, _Come on Carolyn,_ she rallied, _you've_ killed _bigger and badder than him, you can do this. Besides_ , she thought, _the worst is yet to come_.

What followed was hands down the most awkward, embarrassing and undignified few minutes of her life as all bloody three of them watched her squat over that fucking hole. She did her business as quickly as she could, before hurrying over to the sink to splash some water over her face and to try to scrub off all the grime that had accumulated on her skin.

There was so much dirt on her. Most of it built up from her trek through the Alps and even before then with the resistance; she hadn't had a proper bath in days and sleeping on that floor last night hadn't done her any favours. She could feel the layers of filth sticking to her like a second skin, a filmy coating of sweat and grunge that made her itchy and uncomfortable. She probably smelt like something that had died.

" _That's enough,"_ the guard behind her said colourlessly and Carolyn straightened herself up from where she was bent over the sink. She griped the cracked porcelain for a few seconds longer, trying in vain to absorb some sort of strength and grounding from the old thing. Lines of cold water like tears ran down her skin, from her face and neck, and tiny drops dripped from her fingertips to the floor like blood from a wound. She let go.

Turning to stare at the guard, for one moment she let the full force of her hatred and utter disgusted loathing bleed through her eyes before schooling her features.

The man didn't react, not even the smallest of flinches, he just walked out of the room and they were off again.

Carolyn felt slightly better now: a little cleaner and her bladder no longer hurt, but her stomach gurgled and thrashed insistently with hunger, she hadn't eaten since before she was captured and she doubted that was changing any time soon.

She used the time wandering through yet more identical hallways to prepare herself for interrogation.

Starvation, humiliation, torture, rape. Permanent harm, psychological damage, crazy experiments. Carolyn didn't know what she feared more, she knew any of these methods could be employed, SOE agents had been tortured in the past and the results were never pretty. All she could really do was pray that she had the strength and resolve not to break under the pain, to not give an inch no matter what they did to her.

Thousands of lives rested on her shoulders, the information she knew could give the Nazis a route into British Intelligence, could ruin so many missions and critically damage the war effort. She knew secrets that were best kept hidden: the names and locations of resistance groups and MI6 contacts in occupied Europe, placings of troops, contact codes and military secrets: things that _could_ _not_ pass into enemy hands.

The more she thought about it, the more she could feel her palms start to sweat and a faint tremble begin build at the base of her spine. She brought a hand up to pull sharply at a strand of hair and began to feel an awful queasy sickness grow in her gut. She wanted, suddenly and desperately, to talk to her mother. Her poor mother who had no idea what she did or where she did it, who was safety tucked away in the Kentish countryside under the false impression that her only child was just another wireless operator in London. Carolyn wanted, quite abruptly, for her mother to tell her it was all going to be okay.

But that was impossible and she was here to face her fate alone, whatever that would be. She didn't want to be tortured, was naturally utterly _terrified_ at the prospect of it, but she had walked into this with her eyes open. She straightened her back, directed her gaze firmly ahead and resolved to do her country proud.

But throwing herself off the gangway was beginning to look more and more tempting.

She peered with sharp eyes at everything they passed on their trek. Discretely observing the production below, she tried to understand as best she could what the weapons they were building were, but she was no engineer and so most of it meant nothing to her. She wanted to at least get _something_ useful out of this; her information on Hydra was already incredibly important but it would be worlds more valuable if she could find out what they were doing. Even if escape at this point was looking more impossible by the minute.

Finally they came to a stop outside of a nondescript metal door. It was a blank steel grey, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wall if not for the tarnished doorknob protruding from it and all the more unnerving for its unobtrusiveness.

A chill shot through Carolyn's blood as she realised that there was a chance that this was the last door she'd ever walk through.

The guard gave three brisk knocks, " _Obergruppenführer, it's Sturmbannführer Klein with the prisoner you asked for,"_ he called out.

There was a moment of silence, then, _"Enter!"_ a muted man's voice answered from the other side of the door.

 _This was it,_ this was the nightmare that plagued every Allied agent no matter what they did: one on one time with a high-ranking Nazi official. There was literally no telling what this meeting would entail, he could put a gun to her head or he could start pulling out fingernails, no one here was going to stop him. Hopefully all he wanted was to ask what a woman was doing at his camp, thus far she was the only one she'd seen, but that was wishful thinking and she was more pragmatic than that.

The guard opened the door and stepped inside, the soldier behind her jabbing her again with his gun to get her to follow and reluctantly she did.

The first thing Carolyn did when she entered the room was take stock of her surroundings. The room was large, the layout basic and the décor bland. There was a discomforting sterility to it, like it had been scrubbed raw and left with nothing but toneless grey walls and a concrete floor. It was as if it had been washed so much that any semblance of flavour and personality had been washed from it too. The bright industrial lighting made it feel soulless and dead.

There was a single steel chair in the centre of the room, bolted to the floor and covered with straps to secure a person, and across from it, a table. The table surface had nothing on it save an eerily neat stack of papers and a ticking metronome that swung backwards and forwards, the sound empty and regular.

There were no windows and no decoration, except a single unadorned map of Europe pinned to back wall.

The set up was designed to wage psychological war on a person: from the disconcerting blankness of the room to the echoing beat of the metronome and Carolyn knew that too long left in this rom alone would drive a person mad.

There was no escape from here, no weapons she could use, only her own mental fortitude would help her here.

At the back of the room, facing the map, was a man. He was tall, statuesque and radiated a kind of contained malice in the tightness of his shoulders and the military precise set of his stance. His uniform was all black like the guard's, but unlike his, it looked to have only loosely been based on the SS uniform and appeared more like a cross between a doctor's clothes and military dress.

As she was pushed into the room he remained where he was, face not moving from his intent perusal of the map and body locked in that coiled stillness.

So this was Johann Schmidt.

She'd read his file of course, back at headquarters, and seen his face so many times on those Nazi propaganda reels that she could pick it out from a crowd of thousands if she cared to try. He was a man made of conjectures and half-known truths to MI6 and the SOE, nowhere as flamboyantly excessive as Goebbels or as bizarre and well known as Himmler. Of the Nazi inner circle, Schmidt was the most mysterious. He was a Great War veteran, a man who had served on the Eastern Front in some of the worst killing fields of the war, an obsessive intellectual who, like most Nazis, saw the pursuit of 'superior man' to be paramount. He had been a confidant of Hitler, a close friend and associate of Himmler, a man who had taken the SS and SD by storm and earned the medals he wore in combat in the first months of the war. A man who had gained his position through murder and madness, a man to be feared.

And Carolyn would be stupid not to fear him.

Seeing him, in this room built for the madness that he himself harnessed so well was bone-chilling; she could feel her pulse start to race and a light sheen of sweat begin to build up on her skin. She swallowed reflectively and kept her face utterly blank as she fought not the fiddle nervously with her hands or pull at her hair again.

" _You may go now, Sturmbannführer,"_ he said, his voice soft yet it reverberated in all corners of the room.

" _Sir!"_ the guard snapped, saluting, before leaving the room with the other two soldiers.

And then it was just her and Schmidt.

" _Take a seat, fr_ _ä_ _ulein,"_ he ordered, still not facing away from the map.

Carolyn decided it was in her best interests to obey and slowly but carefully made her way over to the solitary chair, carefully ignoring the restraints attached to it. Her worn boots treaded softly on the concrete floor and it felt to her as if her heartbeat were a thousand times louder. Once she had sat down there was another pause, a long drawn-out silence, interrupted only by the ticking of the metronome, that seemed to take with it all sense of time as she and Schmidt remained poised and still in the tense quiet. She knew this was a game, a ploy designed for her to lose her cool and break up the crippling pressure in the room; begin to yell and scream and generally succumb to the fear and desperation that she was feeling.

But Carolyn would not break so easy.

She remained silent and motionless even as the tension built to an almost unimaginable heat. She knew the moment she spoke she gave complete control over to him in, by giving into the psychological strain to talk and rail against her situation she ceded to him valuable ground.

Eventually he broke the silence.

" _I must confess, fr_ _ä_ _ulein,"_ he begun, _"I am at a loss as to what to call you,"_ he said in precise, carefully articulated German. _"For you see, it is not often that I meet someone with so many names and faces."_

Carolyn went cold all over, and the world suddenly stopped. _No._

Schmidt finally turned around to face her, his eyes were dark and coldly calculating, his face blank and flat. He walked towards her, hands firmly behind his back and gaze intense and he used his height to his advantage as he loomed over her from the other side of the desk. It was an intimidation tactic. One she was ashamed to say worked as she shrunk back a little inside.

He affected a disinterested, almost ponderous expression as he picked up the pile of papers and rifled through them.

" _So, fr_ _ä_ _ulein, who are you? Are you Susan Baker, Colette Nancy, Mary Inglesdon, Estelle Dubois or perhaps Isabel Fournier?"_ he asked almost genially although his eyes were sharp and bloodied. With each name he said he slapped a file onto the table and she was horrified to realise that they were files detailing her most recent aliases. Her face remained unchanged but inside she was reeling. How did he know all this? Where did all this information come from? And _oh God, what did this mean for her?_ This was confirmation that HYDRA knew she was a spy, that she'd been in and out of behind enemy lines for _years_.

Her head span and her pulse skyrocketed, she stared at the files with wide eyes but refused to let any of her inner turmoil show. Her breathing she kept steadfastly even though all she wanted to do was gasp and pant like she'd just run a marathon. She kept her eyes lowered onto the table as her mind screeched and cried as it tried to make sense of it all.

What was he going to do now? She'd heard stories, many, many stories regarding Nazi treatment of spies and it felt as though in this moment all her darkest nightmares were coming true.

" _Hmm,"_ he sighed, _"you don't feel like talking? That's too bad really,"_ he said. He then produced a knapsack out of nowhere and emptied it onto the table with a clatter that rang unnaturally loud in the room, _"Maybe this will help you discover your voice."_

Carolyn didn't know it was possible to feel more frightened than she did, but the universe just had to prove her wrong. There on the table were pieces of equipment that were very familiar to her: her trusty Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, her Welrod pistol, French identity and ration cards, a garrotte, a fountain pen that actually contained an assassination blade, a watch with an inbuilt recording device and various bits and pieces for building explosives on the fly. _God this was nearly all of her stuff._

She remained silent, though now more out of fear than anything else.

" _Still not up to talking?"_ Schmidt asked and stared down at her coldly, _"You may not be aware of this, Fr_ _ä_ _ulein Whoever-you-are, but as of yesterday in would be fully within my rights as an SS officer to shoot you right now for being a spy, or simply have you turned over to the SD to be executed without trial."_

Her head shot up at that and she met his eyes with shock in hers. _What?_

" _Yes,"_ his said, pleasure at gaining a reaction visible in his eyes, _"It seems the F_ _ührer has little sympathy for your kind."_ His lips tilted up into a chilled smile that was a frozen as his heart, _"Fortunately you have been caught by Hydra and I no longer listen to what the Führer has to say."_ He gave her an assessing glance, _"I have little use for the information you possess, soon you and all the world will be inconsequential in the face of my power, but I'm sure Doctor Zola can find uses for your body."_ He replaced all her things back into the knapsack and put the files in there too, picking it up, he walked back over to the map.

" _You are lucky, fräulein, if you are fortunate and Doctor Zola is successful you will get to take part in a new era, the world will bow before the might of Hydra,"_ he said in a way a seer might speak prophecy.

Carolyn heard awful pre-natural ringing in her ears and an electric shiver of foreboding ran down the length of her spine.

" _Have a good day, fräulein, I expect we'll be seeing each other again soon,"_ he said, as he walked toward the door, and with one final emotionless glance her way, he left. Leaving her alone in the room with the obnoxious ticking of the metronome.

She picked it up and threw it as hard as she could against the wall and stared as its shattered innards spilled over the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**In the Shadow of Great Times**

Chapter 3

 **Disclaimer: Rights to the MCU belong to Disney**

* * *

Carolyn had no idea how long had passed.

Isolated in that room, there was nothing at all the mark the passage of time, only the steadily growing weakness of hunger and the dryness in her throat. She was utterly exhausted. Her sleep last night had been light and constantly interrupted anytime she'd heard a noise, and the seriousness of her situation had kept her alert.

Now she was feeling the effects of that.

The adrenaline rush from her awful meeting with Schmidt earlier had now worn off and she was left feeling off kilter and woozy. She refused to rest though, not when she knew it was only a matter of time before Zola or one of his cronies turned up to have their way with her, and she didn't want to be asleep when that happened.

God, she didn't know what was worse, being left in this room to slowly go mad, waste away and die or spending what would probably be a brief but excruciating time under Doctor Zola's knife. Although, knowing what she did about that slimy little worm, it would probably be some hideous combination of both.

He would test the very limits of her body, push the fortified boundaries of her mind; wear her down over hours of abuse and neglect until she was a shivering wreck and then cut out her heart. The terrifying thing was that he would have no reason to pull his punches, no need to keep her sane since Hydra had no use for her information. The reality of it made her want to scream.

But that would be a waste of breath: there was no one to hear her and she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of it anyway.

The room was infuriatingly blank and obnoxiously silent, it made her breaths irritatingly loud and the constant repetitious steadiness of them made her want to rip her ears off. She was bored out of her mind, clawing at the walls with maddening anxiety as the wait for the Doctor became more torturous than she thought actual torture might be. The things her mind conjured up in the absence of any real stimulation made her empty stomach turn and her eyes water.

Her time as a spy had taught her patience but she was no saint.

The room, Carolyn knew, was exactly fifteen paces long and seven paces wide and if one of her paces was approximately two feet, that was four-hundred-and-twenty feet-squared of sheer mind-numbing monotony with a dash of paranoia and despair.

She was quickly running out of things to do to keep her mind occupied.

First, she had tried to amuse herself with the map on the wall, but all that had done was depress her when she'd realised how much of that map was under Nazi control. At least Allied forces had made landfall on the European continent now, with the invasion of Italy earlier that year, but the cost had been high and the battles long and bloody, the Germans had fought tooth and nail for every inch of land they'd lost and it was a long way still to Berlin.

It grated on her, just a little, as it did a few of her countrymen, that they'd needed American help to get this far.

Still, although the map depressed her, she'd tried her hand at devising battle strategies for the coming months and for that potential invasion of France that had been whispered about in the corners of headquarters back home. There was the Atlantic Wall to contend with, a massive system of fortifications and weaponry stretching from Norway to southern France, and the Gothic Line, cutting Italy in half to the south. Luckily the Soviets had been steadily beating back the Germans since the summer, but there were growing concerns about the Soviets themselves in the halls of power which made their victories less and less something to celebrate. Ultimately, much as she knew about the Nazi command structure and bits and pieces of military intelligence, she knew nowhere near enough to plan an offensive to a workable degree and the whole thing just began to frustrate her.

After that she'd tried her hand at fixing the metronome she'd broken earlier. The sharp metallic pieces were still scattered haphazardly across the floor where they'd fallen and their limp, dull shapes had promised at least a modicum of stimulation. But the structure and purpose of each one had eluded her. She'd fiddled, with intense levels of focus, with the components in an effort to stave off the dark thoughts that circled her mind, but to no avail. She could assemble an improvised explosive on-the-fly yes, but this mechanical wizardry? It was so finicky and complex, each piece had a specific place in the working of the device and she'd sooner be having tea with Hitler than figure out the order.

 _Goddammit this was impossible!_

In the midst of her growing irritation with the metronome, she'd become bizarrely existential (probably the product of the tiredness more than anything) and began to equate the tiny pieces of metal to people in a system. Each part had to work properly in its assigned place with the entire system to succeed, one piece out of place or missing and the whole thing fell apart. It was a metaphor for life, each person or group a cog in the greater machine of society, each piece keeping the machine running seamlessly.

But what benefit did the cogs get from their work? The only person who really benefited was the owner of the metronome, who, as she had shown, could smash the system at any time. The cogs continued to grind and grow more and more worn with time, with no end in sight and a potentially cruel or indifferent owner.

Maybe the cogs were revolting against the system? Maybe that's why it was so hard to put them back together again. Maybe they had no desire to return to the system that had chained them down. Maybe people should do that too, maybe people-cogs should rebel against the forces that controlled them.

And _wow,_ she got weirdly Marxist when she was bored.

Eventually, she admitted defeated and discarded the broken metronome, throwing it to the side in hopeless anger and flopping down onto the hard, concrete floor. The industrial lamp buzzed dully overhead and bright white light stung her eyes. She counted the cracks in the ceiling with the same intensity she would study a code and wondered how her cellmates were doing.

Carolyn didn't know how much longer she could take this waiting.

She knew that this was just another form of torture, the anticipation a cruel trick in itself to wear down her defences, to strip her of fortitude and drive her wild with anxiety. It was the passage of time that bothered her the most however: the lack of windows and unchanging blank nature of the room obscuring the passing of each second, minute, hour. Only the empty churning of her stomach and the raspy dryness of her throat telling her that any time had passed at all.

Her last proper meal had been some time ago now, cooked up by a farmer's wife in a little house near to the Italian border, it made her mouth water and her insides twist painfully just thinking about it. Since then it had been whatever rations they could carry through the alps and whatever they'd been able to find on the trail, none of which had been particularly filling.

 _God,_ she could really go for a Sunday Roast. Beef, cooked to perfection slowly over the whole morning, fat roast potatoes and a massive Yorkshire pudding, all drizzled with gravy. Carrots, beans and broccoli, parsnips and maybe cauliflower. She grimaced and clutched at her gurgling stomach as she continued to stare up at the dull ceiling, she was just making it worse for herself now.

No one had eaten properly since the beginning of the war. Rationing provided enough food to live by it was true, but nowhere near enough to fill you, just walking through the bombed-out streets of London would tell you that. Waifish adults, just this side of lean and children with thin faces, prominent cheekbones and large, wide eyes. No one was starving, but no one had anything to spare either. Everyone had trimmed down, she mourned the loss of her figure sometimes at night as she ran her fingers over the bulges of her ribs and felt the thin corded muscles of her arms.

Carolyn sighed and licked chapped lips with a dry tongue as she pulled herself up to sit and shuffled so she was leaning against the wall. Lying down was giving her body the wrong idea and despite her drooping eyelids and weak limbs she wasn't going to succumb to sleep. Her exhaustion headache and dehydration one had mixed now, forming an insistent pounding that throbbed out from behind her eyes and that the _fucking_ _light_ wasn't helping. Her vision was beginning to go fuzzy around the edges as the urge to shut her eyes grew. She rubbed fiercely at them in frustration, pulling roughly at the delicate skin as she tried to will herself alert; she blinked tiredly and flopped her head back against the wall, the _thump_ as her skull hit the concrete jolting her painfully.

She tried to run through everything she'd learnt since she'd been here to keep herself occupied. Hydra had gone rogue, Schmidt had pretty much confirmed that himself and it must have been recently otherwise the Luftwaffe would've been all over this place like flies to honey. Maybe they were on their way and she felt nauseated that for once in her life she _hoped_ they were: she'd rather Göring's smug gob any day to Schmidt's cold genius.

Hydra were planning something: something big. The factory floor had been a hive of production with large, deadly ordnance lined up in neat rows and endless queues of Hydra's strange knapsack guns rolling along production lines. It had been a sight made to intimidate and it certainly did, but _what did it mean?_

She couldn't imagine that Hydra had strayed too far from the original Nazi goal, their ideals lined up too much for that. Pursuit of perceived 'perfection', domination of 'lesser races' and a regime to last a thousand years.

But what had Schmidt's crazy mind cooked up? _A new era_ he had said, but _how? When? Why?_

She clenched her hands into tight fists as no answers came to her, her blunt nails biting into the meat of her palms sharp enough to draw blood.

Time passed, the silence made her want to scream.

~~~*8*~~~

Sometime later, or maybe no time at all, Carolyn gazed blindly at the wall in front of her.

It was odd, she reflected staring blankly at the grey, grey wall, how much change affected your reality. It was even odder, she thought, as her eyes fogged over and that same wall began to shift and blur, how the lack of it could eat at your sanity.

Carolyn had no idea how long it had been, and frankly, she wasn't sure she cared anymore; time had become all but intangible in the room, a strange missing concept that held no meaning.

Maybe it had been a minute, an hour, a day, a week, she didn't know. All she did know was that she had _never_ been so thirsty.

She swallowed, an awful grating action that _hurt_ as her body desperately tried to conjure up the moisture to wet her barren mouth and chuckled as once again, it did _nothing_. Her breathing was a terrible raspy thing now, a grotesque dry rattle that clawed itself up from inside her chest and burst free in a loud, panting gasp. She sounded like she was dying, and, she thought with some measure of black humour, she probably was. She didn't know how long people could last with no water, but it couldn't be much longer.

Her stomach growled loudly and she grimaced, at least she would die before hunger took her though.

Carolyn closed her eyes in a long, slow blink that dragged heavily over the filmy surface of her lenses. She was so _tired,_ a bone-deep exhaustion that made her heart thud in her chest and her limbs beyond heavy. Her vision had begun to play tricks on her now, taunting her with images of spiders that disappeared the moment she looked at them and mirage shadows of people and things that slipped past in her periphery. It was dizzying and strange and made her want to laugh until she cried.

She had a little earlier. A wild hysterical giggling at the buzzing of the light -which her sleep-deprived brain had suddenly found _hilarious-_ that had tapered off into dry thankless sobbing as _oh God, she been captured by_ Nazi's _and she hadn't eatensleptdrunk in days and her head was ripping apart and her arms were too weak to move and how the_ fuck _was she going to get out of this?_

She had managed to stop eventually, but not until she'd wasted precious water on snot and tears that would achieve nothing.

Her right hand ached where she'd been clutching at one of the broken gears from the metronome to keep herself awake. Its wicked sharp edges were tainted and stained by her blood as her fingers twitched from the pain. Squeezing the thing as her mind began to shut down jolted her into consciousness; provided moments of shuddering clarity where suddenly the world would snap back into focus at the bite in her skin. Her muscles spasmed and pulled around it, but she was past the point of caring, all she knew was that falling asleep would be worse.

A shallow pool of coagulating crimson grew under her hand in time to the beat of her heart.

Everything felt hopeless now, her cracking, dizzy mind had long since given up any attempt at coherent thought and she just felt so _pathetic,_ so _helpless_. She'd even prayed, muttered up feverish, half-understandable pleas to a God she'd hoped had listened. She hadn't prayed since her father had died.

It felt utterly pointless anyway, and she'd held the face of her mother and all her colleagues in London in her mind as she reminded herself why she was here.

She knew, distantly, in the part of herself that was still rational, that this must be a test of some kind, to see how she'd hold out. She wondered if they'd leave her in here until she died; leave her body to slowly rot in this blank hell, alone and forgotten. The thought made her want to sob again.

She almost wished she'd been caught by the Gestapo, a shot to the head would've been a mercy compared to slowly waiting for the dehydration to take her. She felt furious at herself though for even considering such a thing, who was she to wish for the coward's way out when _millions_ of soldiers had no way to escape their hells, when she had known exactly what she was getting into from the beginning? She'd had a _choice_ when she became a spy, she could've easily have done nothing and been sat at home with her mother right now. She was doing her duty, sacrificing herself for King and Country and if men like her father could march themselves into the valley of death then by God she could too.

But that was hollow comfort sat here, hundreds of miles from Allied forces, starving, exhausted and slowly desiccating.

Her head hung uselessly on her shoulder, her skull against the chilled concrete, the moist paint cooling her heated head now that her body had stopped sweating. She couldn't stand up, the dehydration, hunger and tiredness had caused her to black out momentarily the last time she'd tried and she'd collapsed in a pitiful heap on the floor, bruised and pathetic, trying her hardest not to cry.

God, she couldn't help herself now, her emotions were frazzled and out of control as she swung between helpless giddiness and dark depression. Her best defence was to avoid thinking too much, to focus only on the constant, slow thud of her heart as it throbbed through her body. But that didn't always help: especially when she constantly forgot what she was doing, lost count of her heartbeats or looked to closely at her surroundings. She felt as though she could pass out at any given moment, only sheer force of will holding her conscious.

And behind all of that, behind the thirst and the hunger and the urge to just _sleep,_ was the terror. Sheer mindless terror that grew worse as time passed, the primordial fear of a weakened, cornered animal when it knows its time is up.

She tightened her fist around the metal gear and hissed as it gouged deeper into her skin, but at the same time revelled as her mind shot into focus. The gear was her plan, she had long since accepted that it was unlikely she'd get out of this alive, so had resolved to do what she could when the doctor arrived.

She knew from rumours and whispers that Dr Zola liked to get close, liked to see the reactions he pulled from his victims, liked to see the whites of their eyes.

She was going to use that to her advantage. Carolyn was going to slit his soft throat. She was going to look at the whites of _his_ eyes and smile before they shot her as his blood drained from his body. One small victory: her legacy and the last symbol of her resistance.

But first she'd have to survive that long.

She sighed to herself in the bright silence, the air scraping her throat as she tried to keep herself awake. Exhaustion really fucked up her emotional control and she was two seconds away from crying again, and this time for no goddamned reason. She couldn't let herself though, she knew instinctively that once she let herself fully slip into that hole, she wouldn't be climbing out.

 _CLANG!_

Carolyn immediately shot to attention, her head whipping around to face the direction of the noise. She hissed when the abrupt movement made black spots swim in front of her eyes and cursed her own weakness as the world spun dangerously and her heart stuttered in her chest.

The noise had come from the huge steel door in the corner, the only way in and out, and was quickly followed by the scrapping sounds of keys being twisted inside the lock.

She tensed all over and the fear clawed its way to the front of her mind, terrible and insistent. This was it. _This was it_. This would potentially be the last few minutes she spent on the Earth and the world slowed down around her: hunger, thirst, pain, forgotten.

She could see clearly again, even if it was just a trick of adrenaline, feel the pulse of blood in her veins and down her hand as it dripped from her fingers. All her training, every Nazi she'd shot and life she'd been unable to save all led up to this moment. She no longer cared about surviving, only taking who she could with her, and the world achieved a kind of clarity that would be impossible in any other situation.

The door swung open with a soft metallic groan, barely more than a sigh from its well-oiled hinges. She let herself slump again against the wall, deceptively weak as her muscles tensed all over in preparation to strike; let her eyes drift half-lidded and delirious as she watched through her lashes. The key was to look harmless, to appear so beaten and exhausted that the doctor would come closer, wouldn't bother restraining her and give her the few precious seconds she needed to strike.

She stared hard at the opened door, waiting to see who would step through first. _Come on_ , she thought, _show yourself you cunts!_

The first man through was an officer, not the one from earlier but it hardly mattered at this point. He was tall, easily six feet, with those refined aryan good looks that the Nazi's so prized and a long sharp nose that dominated his face. She immediately wanted to break it. He was expressionless, his gaze a dead blue stare that either said he didn't care or had long ago given up. He gave her pathetic, huddled form a dismissive once over before stepping to the side.

And then, _the doctor._

Dr Arnim Zola was a weedy little man, even less impressive in the flesh than he was in the countless images she'd studied. Small and wrinkled and twitchy with watery eyes enlarged by plain wire glasses and thinning, receding hair. He wasn't Schmidt: he didn't have the immense presence of the Obergruppenfüher, nor his chilled, uncaring gaze and staunch military baring, but what he did have was somehow even more terrifying.

For it was his weak, mousey form that concealed a monster. The plague-ridden flea on the back of a rat: obscured and hidden by bigger vermin but really the worst of them all.

" _So this is my present,"_ he muttered as he walked towards her, his steps light and shuffling, a nervousness to them that the soldiers lacked, _"she's certainly prettier than the last one,"_ he finished, giggling, high pitched and breathy.

His pale eyes ran her over and she felt physically dirty feeling them trace her skin. There was no lust in them, no perverse yearning, but instead the pinpoint exactness of a scientist, an eerie focus lit from behind with a kind of madness that made her the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She wanted to curl in on herself to get away.

The way he looked at her was terrifying, more so than any other man she'd met. He stood and studied her for a moment with a crazy _hunger_ in his stare, a kind of intense covetousness that was less for her as a woman and more for her as a _thing_. She felt like a bug at the end of a microscope, a disease in a petri dish, a butterfly pinned to a board.

" _She's a lovely specimen, don't you think?"_ he said, tilting his head to the officer behind him, " _young and strong, and a good brain too, to be a spy."_

" _Yes, Herr doktor,"_ the man replied blandly, face barely moving an inch.

Zola turned to her and sighed, " _Look at what I must work with,"_ he tutted and shook his head, _"muscle-headed thugs with no appreciation for science,"_ he said to her, almost conspiratorially, as if they were friends sharing a secret.

She couldn't stop the snarl that twisted up her face as he spoke to her, an ugly rictus of hate; she almost pounced on them then, but no, _just a little closer._

His face lit up in a mad grin when he saw her expression, a hideous little thing that didn't reach quite his eyes, " _Ah, you understand German! That is good, very good,"_ he took another few steps forward, _"we will have such fun, you and I,"_ he said happily, in that same secretive tone.

It was then that the officer decided to speak, " _Doktor,"_ he said, stepping forward just slightly and eying her up with what was almost wariness, _"shouldn't we restrain the prisoner first?"_ he asked, indicating to the two Hydra soldiers by the door, soldiers, she was ashamed to say, she hadn't noticed.

Zola narrowed his eyes at her and hummed in thought, " _I suppose we must, mustn't we,"_ he sighed almost regretfully, _"get to it then,"_ he ordered.

Carolyn saw her chance at retaliation and killing Zola begin to slip through her fingers as the two grunts at the door began to move towards her. _Fuck that_ , she thought furiously, and with the last dregs of energy and adrenaline flowing through her exhausted body, she sprang at the doctor with an inhuman growl.

Zola's eyes widened as she flew at him, swinging the metal gear wildly at his throat, her teeth bared and snarling and her hair flying around her face in a greasy mess. He jumped back with a startled yelp and the two grunts leapt toward her with their arms outstretched.

Her awareness narrowed and time turned to soup as she saw the precise moment that the bladed edge of the metal gear _just_ missed Zola's throat.

 _No!_ she screamed internally as the world speed up again and the two Hydra soldiers tackled her to the floor. The air exited her lungs in a gasp as her head hit the concrete floor and her vision blacked out with the force. _No,_ she moaned plaintively as she felt the gear being prised from her bloodied hand by one of the men and the other pull her weakened body up to kneel on the floor.

A dreadful wave of despair washed over her then, made all the worse by her extreme tiredness and the throbbing ache of her head. She had _failed_ , she wouldn't get another chance now, she'd be tied up and who knows what else: unable to fight back as Zola worked.

 _God_ , she almost sobbed, _fuck, what would he do to her?_

She was worse than dead now, there would be no clean shot to the head for her, only slow torture on the doctor's examination table. She wanted to scream: to howl and rage and spit and _cry_ because _for God's sake_ it wasn't as if she would have much longer to do any of it.

Instead though she kept her face still and hard and as man behind her used her hair to yank her head up to meet the doctor's eyes. His unassuming little face blurred in front of her eyes as the hunger and pain and blood-loss returned and she resisted the urge to spit on him.

" _Spirit, I see,"_ he murmured contemplatively, reaching two pudgy fingers toward her face and gripping her chin between them. His hands were clammy and cold and his hold unnaturally strong, _"No matter,"_ he added dismissively, _"that will go."_

Carolyn bared her teeth at him in a primal expression of fury; for all her physical fatigue, her eyes were alight with hopeless anger and her face twisted and fierce. She had no energy to fight, it was all she could do to keep from slumping into the guard's hold, but that didn't mean she was going to make it easy. She hissed at him in heavily accented German, _"You just try it, Scum,"_ and watched as his eyes widened, obviously not expecting a response.

Her amusement was short-lived however, as the moment the words left her lips, the solider standing to the side of her stepped forward and kicked her sharply in the stomach.

 _Whumpf._

The air was driven from her lungs in a gasp of shocked agony, and she instinctively tried to curl in on her abdomen; inadvertently causing herself greater pain as she was forced to stay straight by the solider holding her hair.

 _Shit,_ she cursed as tears came to her eyes and air became harder to grasp through the pressure pulsing in her stomach. _Fuck,_ she thought as she felt the bruise already taking shape under her skin. Her breath came in dry gulps as she peered through blurry vision up into the unchanged face of Dr Zola. He looked completely unaffected by her pain, watching her responses with an absent kind of curiosity most reserved for uninteresting conversations or dull briefings.

He sighed and managed to look somewhat disappointed as he shook his head, _"Back-chat will get you nowhere, fra_ _ü_ _lein,"_ he tutted, as if chastising a child, _"we will have a much better relationship if you refrain from doing so."_

Carolyn snarled through the pain and almost spat that _she didn't want any relationship with him_ , but manged to stop herself when her stomach gave another sore twinge.

Zola nodded, apparently satisfied with her lack of response and turned to the officer, who had been observing the whole affair with that same blankness on his face. " _Have your men take her to my lab,"_ he said, _"I wish to begin tests immediately."_

The officer clicked his heels together and bowed his head, _"Of course, Doktor,"_ he said tonelessly, before turning to his two men, _"you heard him, men,"_ he barked, _"escort the prisoner to Dr Zola's lab."_

" _Sir!"_ the two soldiers saluted, clicking their heels.

They rushed to grab her under her arms, one at each side as they yanked her up, stumbling to her feet. Her knees gave out under her own weight and she felt so weak as her stomach cramped painfully and her head spun. She wanted to snipe, and snarl and rage at them both, but all she could manage was a breathy gasp and a twisted grimace as they pulled her up again.

Between them, they dragged her, barely holding herself up, toward the door, her limp weight balanced between them. It was beyond humiliating, she couldn't even walk with dignity to her grave and she cursed the futility of trying to escape.

As she was pulled through the steel door she heard the shuffle-click of Zola following and wanted to throw up as, behind her, she heard his whispery voice.

" _I think you might just be perfect, fra_ _ü_ _lein."_


End file.
